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Don't put pictures of others in the internet without their consent
Don't restrict marginalised children from finding support and community online when their in person "support system" is harming them
What are the statistics on this, and how many children actually find a healthy support system on social media sites, versus more harm? Not just the demographics perceived as at risk, but children as a whole.
EDIT: I don't understand the downvotes, on a platform that otherwise seems to greatly encourage freethinking based on empirical data?
The modern world has made it so that teenagers have nowhere to "exist" without paying. Even hanging out on the road gets the police called on them.
Many have moved to online communities. At that point the line between social media and game are quite blurry. Is a Minecraft server a game, or a way of having fun with your friends?
As someone who "found my tribe" online, long before I found them in real life, I understand where the woods are coming from. Even for adults, the modern world has become VERY socially isolating.
It's also not just bad households. A lot of families now have 2 working parents. This leaves very little time for arranging playdates, or giving lifts to friends. Kids supplement their lost social time with online time. Some end up in toxic communities, but most flow through it with years of experience at this point.
I watched a talk on internet safety for children (as a parent/guardian). One of the biggest bits of advice was to stay involved. Play the games they love, even if they bore you. Let them talk about their online friendship groups. You can then help guide them towards good choices, rather than deal with the fallout from bad ones compounding.
The internet didn’t exist when I was a kid. If it had, I would likely have found a way to escape my abusive parents much earlier. Saying that, I am also an strong-willed, stubborn autistic person, so I may not represent the average person.
I grew up on the 90s internet. It wasn't necessarily safe. The biggest difference seems to be that it wasn't as populated, saturated, and easy for Ye Average Person to get sucked into (or groomed by) harmful communities. Those remained fairly underground. We were hopeful the internet would benefit from (and benefit mankind) via increased accessibility and interoperability, but in retrospect I feel like that has been it's downfall. This is a subjective opinion.
There's a lot of "Likely would have" comments when this subject comes up, and a lot of second-hand anecdotes that don't constitute a good basis for decision making. While I'm sure at some point, such support networks have formed, and stayed a major part of an individual's life, in most cases, without a real grounded, in person network, most of these groups end up collapsing into isolated fragments again or turning into just another ad funnel for garbage that doesn't actually help anyone, it just monetizes suffering.
Net good to net harm? There's a strong case to be made that the marginal benefits of these platforms are deeply outweighed by the enormous suffering they cause.
I found my people and it saved my life. All I am saying is that the internet can make it easier to find your people, even locally. There are programs for queer kids, abused women, and abortion that serve this very purpose. the question is not whether they exist and work, it is whether they are accessible to kids when their own guardians may be the entire problem. Both prongs of this proverbial “making services available” fork are important.
At what cost? How many have lost hope and worse because the only thing they found in the noise of the internet was hate? Or worse, someone profiteering or exploiting their isolation?
At what ratio do we acknowledge that the "cure" is at least as bad as the disease. Could we even get reliable numbers on that given it's all on private platforms that have every reason to lie? Facebook is responsible for igniting at least one genocide. How many more before it's too many?
What a constructive comment.